Despite being known as an "unworthy" follow-up to the great game that was StarControl 2, this is not a bad game to be completely fair
it's inferior to StarControl 2 for sure, the Music sounds older, the Puppets not only misrepresent the old races, but some got too deep into the "Uncanny Valley"
BUT, Some songs are nice, some puppets are impressive, not all voices are bad, the story is okay, and the gameplay does remind you of StarControl 2's, though more clunky
Also, this game not only has the Nostalgia Factor, but also its part of the series (Albeit in another dimension)
So being completely fair, i give the BlackSheep of the StarControl series an 7/10
Its not expensive, buying it helps the series, and after all, it's a look at an Good Old Game!


But really while the Orz have a good Puppet... The Syreen man... WHAT?

It's not as good as Star Control 2, but it has its moments. A must for Star Control fans.

Classic. Worth ever penny. I took my time and explored all the dialogue I could due to the interesting writing and to flesh out every unique characteristic for each race. I enjoy the muppet style animations, even though the hand drawn from Star Control 2 were very well done as well. I don't care if the muppet style looks cheesy, I love the cheese. Take your time with the game and enjoy all the creativity put into it.

Star Control 3 has the honor of being one of the first games I'd ever played, and to that I can give it credit for showing me a much different angle to sci-fi, a new variation on gameplay, and some interesting alien characters to engage in some very light diplomacy with.
I can also give it the honor of being one of the games to show me that nostalgia can be sorely, sorely wrong. Dead wrong in fact.
Now I'm not a Star Control 2 fanboy or advent or anything of that nature - and while I do enjoy the game immensely I've put way more time into re-completing Star Control 3 it should count as credit time towards a college course in absolute frustration avoidance.
Star Control 3 is one of those games that's both hard and somewhat easy to recommend, if you didn't play it back then or have no context I can really see this game being a pretty okay time-passer given the low price point. On the other hand if you somehow avoided or skipped this in the proceeding 22 years, you are absolutely not missing much. Nostalgia aside? This game is just rough.

Allow me to explain; while the Star Control franchise is somewhat venerated by some for being one of the bastions of sci-fi in games that both is original and replayable it shares some aspects with what eventually became Mass Effect with planet surveys and diplomacy. It ALSO shares feats with Mass Effect 3 in that it killed the franchise dead, but like ME3, it still has some perks which I'll get into.

The first thing the game does upon loading is play some of the most bland and unimaginative MIDI music I may have ever heard in a game, ever. Not only does it totally not set the mood, it's downright laughable in how illfitting it is. Thankfully though, only a handful of tracks really do reach that level as some of the music tracks do really kick some ass - I'd say the Vux, Mycon, Chmmr, and a few of the exploration tracks in particular really kickass and some are very fitting for some diplomatic exchanges like the Doogs, Exquivan and Ploxis tracks. The music isn't 'bad' but - that main menu track still sticks out in my head is the first omen for bad tidings.

The second thing is, the game exclaims on the back of the box that it includes a Colony Management system which is somewhat integral to the plot which I will ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ segway into. After the events of Star Control 2 and the destruction of the Sa-Matra (which looks nothing at all like it does in the FMV), hyperspace for some reason decides to take a vacation and not tell anyone for how long and thus leaves many of the other star faring races totally stranded wherever they were when hyperspace said 'deuces'. The Captain (you) decide to just furnish another type of transportation and a new ship (yes, seriously) outfitted with a "Warp Bubble Transport" system.
The first problem I have with this is the Sa-Matra looks nothing like that, and given Star Control 2's ending you're last seen as an old man some years after the conflict with the Ur-Quan, telling your grand-kids of some other adventures you were going upon. So not only does this not entirely link up with SC3s premise it totally forgets it's starting angle when the game starts.
Secondly, Star Control 2 leaves a very heavy implication that even if the Precursor factories are able to produce such a ship like the flagship from SC2 that it's also implied that resources are thin and could take even years to produce another ship.
Thirdly, what in the ♥♥♥♥ is Warp Bubble Transport and why does it read like "Mary Sue technology" to me? Cause it does.

Moving on from the story, the dialog and the alien races - which are as important to Star Control as mayo on a hoagie and on the whole I can't see much to complain about other than a few missing alien races like the Supox, Thraddash, or Yehat? Not a single one of them somehow ended in Kessari? So how am I to assume how any of the original races like the Spathi or VUX made it to Kessari? In any case, who is there works but your gonna notice nearly instantly these aren't the races you knew. Cast your minds back to the early/mid 90s when people thought making daytime movies into games was a good idea, yeah? not good? All the aliens in this game are FMVs of puppets. Yes, even the human, is a puppet. Why? Cause 90s. At least it's funny some 22 years later to laugh at.
Onto the 'bread' of the diplomacy sandwhich - if you even spent the faintest half-awake hours playing Star Control 2 you're going to notice nearly ALL of the actual dialog is lifted straight from SC2, including quests. I dunno how many ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ times I need to tell the Utwig to stop ♥♥♥♥♥♥ dropping the Ultron outside the space Lowes or whatever, but at this rate I'm gonna leave them in a state of constant 'woe-is-me' stage-propped sadness until they get with the program.
Some of the races do have hints of autonomy like the Ur-Quan splitting at some point into the Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah but when the Kohr-Ah split they literally never leave the home borders. Ever. In fact NONE of the races do.

Due to implications in the story it's implied that you SHOULD be setting up colonies for the various races to keep them afloat but you can seriously go through this game not making A SINGLE colony and never be slapped across the hands for doing so. Unless you wanna miss out on some honestly really broken power-ups your not gonna miss anything. In fact, that "Colony Efficiency" meter in the corner is a static picture and does not change at all. Either your producing so many RUs that you've in turn made so many colony pods the counter is broken OR you've wasted 200 colonists only to leave 1 behind to try again until you find the ONE planet to break the bank for you and never have to attempt it again EITHER.

And the bugs; holy ♥♥♥♥, I remember this game being buggy and I'm not gonna blame it on DOSBox this time. Quest triggers don't kick off as they should, dialog gets sped-up or is missing entirely, music cuts out and repeats in 4 second buffer-loops, the combat AI can became a serious pain in the ass and never fight but CONSTANTLY out-run you if it somehow 'figures out' your in a slower ship and flips between the screens so your only option is to attempt to throw yourself into a planet and hope you die before the screen flips and sends you FLYING across this quadrant of space in such a way that Issac Newton would have a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ temper tantrum OR the game crashes - yeah, I've had the game crash flying INTO planets ON ACCIDENT. I even had one bug where an item that was important to proceed just vanished, leaving me with a broken save file.

So all in all you may think I hate Star Control 3, and on some days, I do, but given how cheap it is - you can either buy it to laugh at with some friends or you could just as easily come in to experience what killed this series dead at all but whatever angle, I really do think it's a game to be experienced warts n all, just bring a fifth of Jack Daniels to prep yourself.

Star Control 3 is a black sheep to StarCon series as much as Heroes 4 was to a HoMM series.
To fully enjoy what SC3 has on offer you're clearly need to achieve 'nothingness of mind' that those exquivans were talking about non stop, i.e. don't have any expectations, go in with an open mind.

A quick overview:
Highlights
- ship to ship combat encounters
- simplicity, non demanding gameplay, relaxed chill atmosphere
- negotiations with other races and solving their tasks
- it's like 1996 all over again

Lowlights
- sometimes the hints on what to do next are extremely vague or even non existent; easy chance to stuck somewhere in the middle of the game without a guide;
- the universe is a static place; every event you see is scripted and non dynamic;

Jumping into more details:
- I first played it somewhere in 1997, but was never able to figure out how to actually play the damn thing properly.
Now I finally found a time to amend that and was surprised at how the game slowly unveils itself and that it's just a simple fun. Especially when you don't have much time for games, SC3 is not demanding, quite relaxing and is easy to pick up and play in short bursts.

- arguably SC3 has the best hyper melee mode ever implemented for StarCon series. This is where SC3 shines the most, and it probably worth buying just for this mode alone.
it's very precise in ship rotation angles and their damage boxes, and provide lots of tactics to explore. Pretty much every ship has its own unique ways of dealing with an enemy, with its own advantages/disadvantages.
Lot of things to consider when choosing your fighter ship: flying speed, crew number, charge regeneration speed, fire range and damage per shot, alternative fire mode (drones, shields, mines, crew regeneration, etc).

Some fun facts
- Mycon podships fire a convenient auto-homing charges, but you can catch your own shot if you fly around carelessly.
- to recharge a Spathi ship shot you have to make the ship crew to cuss using the ALT fire button
- Vux ship is probably the slowest of all but it can launch bio limpets which slow down the enemy ship when attached.
- Syreen ships really seem to be the weakest of all for some reason (no firepower, not really a good ALT fire mode).
- Clairconctlar ship is a slow flying fortress, but it can leave a teleporter beacon behind which makes it extremely dangerous when it can teleport right beside your ship and discharge all of its firepower
- every ship requires lots of resources and time to be poured into it, it really adds a bit more weight and meaning to each one of them.

I really like the pseudo 3D perspective for hyper melee, it adds a bit of depth to the combat, and give a cool isometric view on the ships.
If you feel lost in it, just hit F6 to enable a plane grid, it will be much easier. If you're still don't like it then hit F5 and it'll give you a classic strict top-down view.

- it plays very much like an adventure game set in a StarCon universe. It's like a narration machine. you do some exploration, resource management, discover ancient artifacts, battle it out in melee encounters and then unlock more story pieces and scenarios as you go.

- the planet resource gathering mini-game as well as hyperspace traveling sections and all the slow transitions b/w systems and planets were left behind and replaced with planet colonies and resource management system, and automated traveling.
And it's for good, IMO. Because, let's be honest, those mini-games maybe be fun at first, but later on become quite repetitive and simply tedious.
Now it's all automated so you can focus on race negotiations, exploration, quests and melee combat.
Overall it's more like a mini strategy game + fleet battles than a hands-on arcade-adventure game that SC2 was. Which makes it closer to SC1.

- searching for ancient precursor artifacts is quite intriguing. Most of them will make possible to upgrade your battle fleet.

- the mid 90's style visuals here are cool and underrated IMO. From the rotating planets and worm holes, colony management screen with all the different looking buildings and terrain types, to a classic hyper melee mode representation, and then FMV puppets scenes that give it an early sci-fi movies look - all of it has been done in such a stylish and cohesive manner you don't really see these days.
Some indie folks could learn a thing from this game on how to make it visually striking, clean and memorable and yet not cartoony (for a change). SC:Origins visuals for example are extremely dull and childish in comparison.

- the music score is nice and pleasant at some parts of it and it can become threatening and disturbing at other parts when needed. Nothing really outstanding but it fits the theme and narrative exceptionally well. I also find it very nostalgic.

About the plot:
- the plot itself is entertaining enough and keeps you on the edge of a seat wanting to find out more
- there's a leitmotif through out the game that everything is expendable: resources, costy ships, and even planet systems and races - all serve just one purpose of moving the storyline forward. All in the name of saving current galactic quadrant.
- the Ur-Quan story is probably the coolest one and somewhat tragic even. You really get to know the story behind them and why they used to be so mean to other races in the first place.
- the final Precursors twist is funny but very clever one
- overall the plot is quirky and quite imaginative, and even thought provoking at some points, it respects player's intellect.
On the contrast if you look at some modern games the plot usually tends to be on the dumb side, treating players as if they are some sort of morons only capable of pushing the ABXY buttons and can only choose from one line dialog options

Overall:
If you're a retro gaming enthusiast and you're on a binge for some mid 90's stuff, I recommended it, give it a go. It's a unique game representing its time.
It's no secret that the game was released in a rough state, particularly in how it unfolds the storyline and gives you tasks to do. having a short guide on the side helps with that.

Some tips for newcomers:
- make sure to understand how to play it, don't go in there blindly or you won't have any fun at all. Hit F1 on each game screen and read the descriptions on what does what, read up on the manual, or simply look up some YT videos to get a grasp on basic mechanics, it helps a lot.
- the narrative and the game itself will slowly open up as you progress and will become much more interesting. Don't expect amazing things right away at the start or some silly annoying character that will entertain you, providing some sort of an entry point for a newbie, and then describe every little detail that you could have missed.
- make sure you have enough fuel stations in different parts of the world so you won't suddenly find yourself stuck with no fuel in the middle of nowhere
- in general, if you stuck and ICOM doesn't provide any clue, and even no timed events pop up as days go by, consider looking up the guide or you'll spend lots of hours just poking around galaxy for solution. Even just to know where the certain race is really helps. Once the story will pick up it will become easier to progress further without a guide, but in SC3 it's not a smooth enough process. It may kill the pace for some people.
- make lots of separate saves as you progress, name them accordingly.
- change 'cycles=max' param in dosboxSC3.conf to fit your machine

This game gets a lot of flak for not being Star Control II. However, on the whole it plays very well. The diplomatic puzzles are of the same calibre if not better, the Story is pretty much exactly where you'd expect the story to continue from the last game. On the whole, it's pretty fun.

There are a few things in the game that disappoint, and on a replay 25 years after I originally played it, the come off as little more then a game that was rushed to market. Land grinding has been replaced with a colony building system which feels like they were trying to (poorly) copy civilization games (or maybe master of Orion?) games of the day. But managing colonies does little to speed the game along other then sacrificing ship production for fuel production if you manage to run out of gas. And that's all the part of the game ads up to: establishing little more then an inter-stellar network of fuelling stations. There's a lot of potential in this, but rather then fun at all it's a meaningless chore and a distraction.

Still once the "work" was done, I had a lot of fun figuring out all the races and building my empire. Sure the sense of humour isn't quite the same as the previous game, but it holds it's own.

TLDR: SC3 is not the masterpiece that is SC2, but that doesn't make it a bad game.

Some say SC2 was better, which I can't argue. It was a fine game for the time.
SC3 introduces unique challenges and another great story line.
I enjoyed it from start to finish and know several others who have as well.
If you play 2 - 3 hours, I pretty much guarantee you'll be hooked.

I like the melee. I don't like the music. I like how much power
the Ur-quan has in. It 8 damage per shot.Amazing!!! Great storyline!!!

I absolutely love this game. I had a talkboy, which is the recorder device used in Home Alone 2. I recorded a mess of lines from the aliens and played them at school in middle school.

I'm 33 years old now (or older..). Nostalgia game for me to the max. I had a HUGE strategy guide book for this game to help me figure it all out, which I never really did. I didn't care, it was fun.

My brother and I would play the ship combat in this using one keyboard nonstop, along with Wacky Wheels, Fuzzy's Golf, SCII super melee, and a few others. Once we got the n64, it probably ended our single keyboard multiplayer streak.

My brother and I preferred this game actually over SCII. Which of course is blasphemy to many. We had way more fun with the SC3 version of wormhole ships, Mycons, Doogs blowing each other apart than the prior.

So the game hasn't age that well, I don't care. I'm happy to have it in my library. Will one day go through the whole game and beat it.

I love this game! That may be a hot take, but even if fueled by nostalgia, I thoroughly enjoy replaying this game once every ~5-8 years.

I think a lot of the negative takes come from those who played StarCon2 first and also the fact that it wasn't created by the original creators that made 1 and 2. So I think a lot of my positive take comes from having played StarCon3 first. So if you've never played the series before, it might be interesting to play 3 first to get maximum enjoyment from the series?

Anyway, the thing I like about this game is that discovering all the different races and their quirks in this game is magical (or was magical as a kid and it's from nostalgia now). The writing is hilarious and it's super fun to go through all the dialogue sequences with all races. The puppetry also adds a unique visual style to the game that I've never seen done elsewhere. Even if the game's story isn't canon, their are plenty of new races that just a ton of fun in their quirks! It's sad to me to think they'll likely never manifest in any future game (StarCon4 got cancelled, not sure about SC: Origins, but long story short original creators are making a sequel to StarCon2 under a different name.. there was a legal battle, you can look it up if curious).

It might be from playing for the n-th time, but this game is honestly quite easy and I think that's fine. Again, the really fun part IMO is traveling system to system and discovering each race, going through dialogue, and running through the scenarios that happen with each race. Otherwise the other elements are just fine. Colony mechanic is fine - there's a little strategy in adjusting the production rates and creating new colonies to essentially create gas stations. The combat has its special charm, but otherwise w/e. The combat AI is pretty bad and sometimes the battles last too long. It's super unbalanced too. Some rock-paper-scissors to it, but some race's ships are simply OP. That kinda plays into the story so I think that's fine too.

Not sure if it's an effect of DOSBOX, but the star map does spin way too fast and so I'll just freeze it. Certainly inconvenient and there's def a bunch of other rough edges, but it's also almost 30 years old at this point?

I doubt there's many people seeking to play this on Steam, but if you are, this is my advice:

If you're looking for experiencing a gem from the old days of gaming, willing to look over the rough edges, and enjoy the magic of discovery this game has to offer, then I'd highly recommend it!